Sometimes, the sheer size of a company like Microsoft can make it quite hard to see and realise just how large and profitable such a company can really be. In these kinds of situations, there's nothing like a clear graph to make all those pretty numbers tangible. Up to a point.

Bill co-wrote Microsoft Basic (v2.0 appearing on the Commodore 64). Everything from then on he bought and sold on (DOS included).

So, what's your point? That technology companies -- Microsoft, Apple, Google, etc -- acquire other companies and leverage their investments? That acquisition doesn't yield innovative products? You've got a tough sell there. Many, if not most, of the most widely used software products originated in acquisition targets. Quite frankly, I applaud any company that sees a shortcut to the future, and takes it, in the interest of getting an innovative product to market faster -- and leveraging the strength that comes from scale.

I would hardly call Microsoft Basic worthy of 'coding cred'. If you want cred, look at Woz's insane code in the Apple II, the guy was a programming wizard.

I don't think you fully understand the constraints that both Gates and Wozniak were operating under -- and it's the constraints that set them apart from today's innovation. Gates and Allen squeezed a full-featured BASIC interpreter + data into only 4K of memory. They did this with a variety of innovative tricks -- opcode alignment and jumps, self-modifying code, etc -- using 8080 assembly language. You may like to think that this doesn't give them "street cred" but, frankly, you're full of crap. Most devs today couldn't accomplish the same thing; especially, if they had to use the crude tools that Gates and Allen used at the time. It's a lesson in economy that modern devs would be well-advised to absorb. I'm not trying to minimize Woz, either. He was and remains a brilliant guy, and Apple wouldn't be where it is today without his contributions. Steve Jobs never had the "street cred" to create what either Gates or Woz created.

Some of these people weren't even born or in diapers when Gates created the BASIC interpreter. They take their compilers, memory, and CPU horsepower for granted, not even possessing the slightest context to understand how difficult some of the constraint problems were.